244 HIQUA AND ALLOCOCHICK. 



hikwa,.hiaqua, or ioquo—fov all tliese (and other) forms of the Chinook 

 jargon word are found. Hiqua consisted of strings of the shell of a 

 mollusk (Denfalium) called by conchologists "tusk-shells." These were 

 gathered off the shores of Vancouver's and Queen Charlotte's Islands by 

 prodding into the sea-bottom a long pole with a spiked board* at the end, 

 upon the points of which the slender shells were caught. None were 

 quite two inches in length, many much smaller; and among all the 

 Indians north of the Columbia River the. unit of measurement was a 

 string of about a fathom's length, or as much as could be stretched be- 

 tween the extended hands of the owner. The larger the shells the great- 

 er their value ; forty to the fathom was the standard, fifty to the fath- 

 om being worth scarcely half so much. Early in the present century a 

 fathom was worth ten beaver-skins in. dealing with the whites in Oregon; 

 but witli the advent of the Hudson Bay Company's traders the hiqua 

 disappeared to a great extent, and values were reckoned in blankets, as is 

 now the case in many parts of Alaska aiid Arctic America. 



South of the fur-trading posts, however, this money survived to. a 

 much later date, and is even yet to be seen in certain remote districts, 

 a large European DentaUum being exported to Alaska for trading with 

 Indians of the interior. " Those aboriginal peddlers, the Klikitats," and 

 other Columbians, carried it to. southern Oregon and to the Klamath 

 region year after year, whence it spread through all northern California, 

 receiving there a new name, allooochick, and an alteration of estimate. 

 The northern measure between the extended finger-tips was discarded on 

 the Klamath River for a string scarcely half that length. Among the 

 Hupas, still farther southward, the standard became a string of five shells. 

 Nearly every man had ten lines tattooed across the. inside of his left arm 

 about half way between the wrist and the elbow; in measuring shell- 

 money he drew one end over his left thumb-nail, and if the other: end 

 reached to the uppermost of the tattoo lines, the five shells (about 1870) 

 were worth $25 in gold, or even more. Only one in ten thousand iwould 

 reach this distinction, so that the ordinary worth of a string was $10. 

 "No shell is treated as money at all," says Mr.. Powers, "unless it is long 

 enough to rate as twenty-five cents. Below that ... it goes to form part 

 of a woman's necklace. Real money is ornamented with little scratches 

 or carvings, and with very narrow strips of thin, fine snake-skin, wrapped 



* "Obtained at a considerable depth by means of a long pole stuck in a flat board 

 about fifteen inches square. From this board a number of bone pieces project, which, 

 when pressed down, enter the hollow ends of the shell . . . and [they] are thus brought to 

 the surface." — Kane, Wanderings of an Artist. 



